Billy Graham’s advice on how to avoid sexual sin is increasingly resonating as more pastors are exposed.
Pastor Steven Lawson of Trinity Baptist Church in Dallas is the latest in a long list of Christian leaders alleged to have been engaged in sexual misconduct this year. Al Mohler, president of Sothern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Ky., urges leaders to follow the so-called Billy Graham rule of not allowing themselves to be alone with a woman who is not their wife.
Although Mohler declined to refer to Lawson by name, he called him a “dear friend” who is a “well-known preacher.”
“I want to share that I did not see this coming, and for the sake of history and anyone who may hear this, I don’t want to send them Googling for a name, but I also didn’t want to turn it off, so I won’t use a name,” Mohler said, according to “The Christian Post.” “I’ll simply say this preacher is well known, a man who has preached right here from this platform and a dear friend with whom I have preached all over the country and many parts of the world. I didn’t see this coming.”
Mohler said that although he couldn’t have predicted his failure, there were some signs in retrospect, including the amount of time Lawson spent traveling alone.
“When a catastrophe like this falls upon us, you can look backward and connect some dots, but they didn’t appear until you look back,” he said. “One of those patterns is just an awful lot of time traveling alone and the exposure of being all over the world alone. I just want to speak from the heart and say this kind of catastrophe — the fall of this house — is very great.”
He urged those looking to go into ministry to “make certain there are protections and policies in your life, which means the avoidance of certain patterns in your life that would expose you to this kind of vulnerability and this kind of temptation and this kind of sin.”
“I want to share with you a word that was shared with me by a man I won’t name, a very, very honorable name in Christian ministry,” Mohler said. “His words were these: ‘You will not have sex with a woman not your wife if you are never alone with a woman not your wife. That’s simple math. I’m not going to ask you to repeat it, but I want you to think about it. The moment we allow something to happen, we expose ourselves to a temptation greater than we can resist.”
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice